Assignments, I didn't like them in school and...

Attributes and Assigning Them

As humans we tend to judge people or things by how we believe them to be. It can’t be helped. This is part of our natural survival mechanism. As pagans we are riddled with this. Somehow the belief that everything must represent something else, uniformly, that it is true for everyone across the board, has been adopted. How many times have you opened up a book to tell you exactly what every color represents? How you should regard every quarter? The list goes on and on. Attributes have been assigned to EVERYTHING for us, and we tend to just take it and roll with it like it is perfectly natural, but the key to this is, while assigning attributes to things is natural for us on a very basic human level, following along what other people tell us "is right" is not.

Huh?

Let’s say you REALLY like a shirt. Like, when you see it you get this image of you rocking it, turning heads when you walk down the street, owning the nightclub, feeling amazing about yourself and like you can conquer the world. This shirt is reasonably priced and it is yours…until, your best friend says she doesn’t like it and that this other shirt would do all that and more, a different shirt you don’t love. Do you fall in line with your friend or do you follow your gut?
I hope you follow your gut.

Now, I’m going to move this over to “our world”. I laugh every time I see “Use green to attract wealth, because green is the color of money.” and “Pine represents money, because it’s green.”  Seriously? Really?
Fact. Most money in the world has no green in it.
Fact. Shells, especially those that are pale and shiny, were some of the first “currency” on the planet. Gems and crystals. Metals and minerals. Very few of these are green.
Why then should green, or something because it’s green, represent money based solely on that one single property? Why are we assigning that attribute when it doesn’t make historic, cultural or anthropological sense?
Would the Egyptians or ancients actually use a green candle and pine oil?
Hmmmm

Next, I was reading a book for kitchen witches which said that tart cherries should be used for alertness, awareness and wakening. When I looked deeper into this, the cherries were assigned this attribute because of their taste. As an herbalist this arbitrary nature made me laugh. Tart cherries contain the chemical melatonin, a sedative used especially by swing-shift workers to help them sleep naturally without side effects. Anyone using this “spell” would find themselves anything other than awake, alert and aware.

Here’s another, stop me if you know this one- you are joining in a ceremony. You’ve been handed a script to read when you call the corner. You simply don’t feel the wind candle should be yellow and the words don’t resonate with you but you do it anyway because this is what you’re told. I’m sure we’ve all found ourselves in this situation more than once. Now reflect on how effective that working was for you personally, deeply. If it doesn’t resonate within you, if you can not connect with it, it doesn’t work. Someone else assigned attributes to that area and it made you uncomfortable and discomfort does not good magic make.

I’m going to be bringing this up over and over but here is a bit of a revelation for you- we are the only religion that is supported by science.

Let me say this again: Biology, Astronomy, Physiology, Botany, Chemistry, etc…  AND  Archeology, Anthropology, Proven History all support our beliefs.

WOAH!  How huge of a revelation is that?

We have countless studies to prove several of our beliefs, practices and holidays.

In addition to that, personal experience should be taken into account. For example (and this is another topic I will get into when I hit the “B’s”) I absolutely deplore that darkness/black is associated with bad and white is all things good.  Fact of the matter is that science has shown black is ALL. It absorbs everything so it contains a little bit of each color we see. White is the absence of all, it reflects it all away. I, personally, am allergic to the sun. I am no fan of daylight at all and I find soothing comfort in the darkness. The idea of dark/black denoting evil is absolutely ridiculous to me when light hurts me so much.

I was looking through the same kitchen witch book from earlier that said to keep lavender for comfort, and while the chemical properties are proven to calm, for someone with asthma or allergies it is anything but soothing.

Just because someone in a book said something is so, does not mean it is. Just because someone said “this is ancient wisdom” does not mean it is (in all fairness, Wicca only came into being 70 years ago, not much longer than Scientologists, and has been a mottled practice since then).

It’s so easy for us to go through the neo-pagan shelves at the bookstore and online and call that research, to rely on someone else doing the work for us, but in all honesty- is that truly YOUR practice? Is that you following your path or is it simply walking the path someone else laid down for you?

This, too, is ingrained in our society. Centuries of churches telling us how to believe, laws telling us how to behave, teachers telling us how to think, bosses telling us what to do…it just goes on and on. It’s become our comfort zone collectively as a society to drink down and eat up what others have written or tell us, whether or not it strikes a positive chord deep within us. This is where people end up moving from one thing to another, lost and not knowing who they are. It’s an epidemic in all facets of our society but I see it very much in the pagan community as people cycle from solitary to coven to open circle to group to solitary from one pantheon to another. They spend soooo much money on books, and then do spells from the books to bring money to them. I stand in awe and sadness when I see people desperately looking for a home, but I am also aware I can not give it to them.

Why? Am I some cruel, heartless bitch that just stands by? Perhaps sometimes, but rather than that I am a fan of the Socratic method of learning. Socrates did not believe in giving people the information, he believed in giving people the tools of finding the information and letting them discover truths on their own. This, he said, helped people learn more and on a much deeper level. This I whole heartedly believe. And with the internet at our fingertips, it’s so much easier than ever.

Here’s my challenge to you. The next time you want to work some energy for protection, instead of opening a book and seeing what other people feel should be protective, close your eyes and feel it for yourself. What colors, scents, objects?  Do some research outside of pagan specific books. Look to history, anthropology and science. If you have pagan books, skip to the bibliography and look for the more academic ones. Make it your own.

If blue is angering, not soothing, then don’t use it to calm you.
If you want to make a tea for healing, research the science and lore of the herbs yourself.
If you want to buy that shirt, then do it and wear it with pride!

Always with kindess…blessed be.